


My Breath Near Deathless Ever At Your Side

by Friedcheesemogu



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Deeply and shamelessly influenced by "The Fountain" (2006), Depression, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 16:23:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15513786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Friedcheesemogu/pseuds/Friedcheesemogu
Summary: Levi grieves. Or doesn't.





	My Breath Near Deathless Ever At Your Side

**Author's Note:**

> I've loved Eruri for years. I've read so many fics. I wanted to write my own. I wanted to write. I'm so late to the party I'm hoping I'll be early for the next one.
> 
> Once upon a time, I thought "what if Eruri 'The Fountain' AU?'" And then I pretended like I'd never had that thought and ran away and I did the best that I could to not write it for at least a year. But here we are. It's not a full AU, because it takes place within canon, but it does draw themes and images heavily from Darren Aronofsky's 2006 film "The Fountain." It's by no means necessary to have seen the movie, but I highly recommend it. I also suggest listening to [the soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMAHuf4AaWw&list=PLq7v0u_glP3d5F416lOwIlqlUSUFUysM4&index=1), which pulls my soul out through my ears on good days, and rends it across space and time on the others. Almost every word of this was written while listening to it. Even I'm not sure how to interpret that.
> 
> The title is from Allen Ginsburg's ["Plutonian Ode."](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/plutonian-ode/)
> 
> Unbeta'd, because I have only ever told one person that I even tried to do this.
> 
> There are no words for the absolute terror of posting this.

It comes in waves. 

At first there’s nothing. An hour later, there’s everything. Every day is exactly the same in its relentless change. 

For a moment, he blanks out, he can’t walk straight, he stumbles. 

But there’s nothing even happening, he’s in a hallway, he’s feet from his own room, he’s walked this a thousand times in the light, in the dark. He could walk it in his sleep, but now he can’t do it when he’s awake.

He puts his hand on the door to his room, and it seems wrong. Everything inside is slightly off kilter, as if someone came in and moved every object just a little bit to the right. As though he wouldn’t notice. 

His stomach hurts. It hurts all the time now.

-

The weight is dragging him down.

Hanji doesn’t say anything and doesn’t offer to help. He pauses to shift it. When the moment comes to lay it down, he almost can’t let go. He almost doesn’t want to let go.

“I thought,” she says, and it sounds a little bit like bitterness in her voice, or maybe exhaustion, maybe it’s from the smoke and the screaming. “That you kept the patches.”

Levi looks his jacket, bloodstained and wrecked, and shakes his head. 

“The Survey Corps was everything to him.” he says, “He should be in his full uniform.”

Hanji makes a sound, something that indicates that she knows his words are bullshit, that she's well aware of the things Levi isn’t saying. That this is another selfish choice that he’s making for himself, for both of them, for all three of them, together in this room for the last time. 

“Well,” she sighs finally, “We should get back to the kids.”

There’s blame in her voice now, as clear as anything.

“I know,” he says, to the things she isn't saying.

-

_In the dream he walks._

-

Levi wakes up and he can’t breathe.

It’s been three months. 

He gets out of bed and walks down the hallways that confuse him now, that still try to put angles and walls in places that he would swear they weren’t before. Sometimes he doesn’t remember how he gets from place to place. 

Hanji has moved into the Commander’s quarters, as is her right, but Erwin’s office is empty. It’s messier now, since Hanji has never been good about categorizing paperwork in a way that makes sense to other people, and deciding what goes here and what stays in her lab is a process that is still underway.

Levi curls up on the sofa. If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear the papers shift on the desk as Erwin writes. He can smell the tea that Erwin would so often forget and Levi would think that it was such a waste. There were times when he was feeling decidedly capricious where he’d steal Erwin’s for himself, taking a quiet pleasure when Erwin would finally reach for the cup and find it gone. He’d finally look up from the desk and their eyes would meet like that first day in the Underground.

If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear Erwin breathing, instead of himself trying to remember how. 

Hanji finds him there in the morning. She wakes him up by shaking his arm gently, and for an instant it looks like she wants to say something. 

He leaves before she can.

-

It should be satisfying to see Nile Dawk standing in his dress uniform with red eyes while they honor the fallen in the capital. It’s not.

Levi doesn’t listen to the things that people say, because none of them are right. None of them really knew him. They say that Erwin Smith was exceptional, a one of a kind strategist, the greatest Commander the Survey Corps ever had. He fought for humanity, for the chance to live in a world that was bigger, brighter, less terrifying. And that’s true, he did all those things. 

“But he was in hell,” Levi thinks. “He was in hell every day and he relished it and he lived it and he put lives on the line and climbed his way up a tower of bodies looking into every eye and knowing that this was his choice. He was a golden god with a heart of darkness, and in the end no one knows how fucking selfish he was but me.”

That’s his privilege, to keep it to himself. 

That’s his choice.

-

_In the dream, he walks into the dark throne room._

-

Levi has never put it into words, but Hanji is his best friend. Hanji is the last person he’s known the longest. He remembers the day they met, he remembers the first time he was afraid she was dead, he remembers how he didn’t notice her left eye was gone until two hours later, and Moblit until two days later. He trusts her with everything he is, and he’s only ever trusted one person more.

They don’t talk about his choice on the roof in Shiganshina, but it’s behind every conversation they have.

Sometimes it feels like he’s lost both of them, even though she’s there and breathing next to him. 

He hates himself for wishing it was Erwin instead, because when you’ve lost every close friend you ever had but one, how dare you even consider trading their life for someone else’s?

He does it anyway. 

He’s pretty sure she’s thinking the same thing.

-

Because attachment comes more easily to Levi than people expect, he’s had to train himself how to let go while making it seem effortless, cold, unthinking. He knows that even when you have something that means everything, it might not always be there. Possessions can be broken. Sometimes the two shadows on either side melt until it’s just yours. Levi has lost things and people. He’s been losing them as long as he’s been alive, until it became almost a habit.

He finds, though, that he is a stranger to this kind of grief. 

He chides himself and he swallows and eventually the tightness in his throat is forced to ease. There's no need for this. 

Some days it’s easier. 

Some days, every second is a struggle and a scream and an open, un-healing wound. 

Some days. Every day.

-

_In the dream he walks into the dark throne room, approaching the lattice-work screen that separates the common soldier from the king._

-

Four months.

A whisper against his cheek, the feeling of blond hair brushing against his temple. 

He whirls around and there’s nothing. 

He turns back and he’s at a table with Hanji, Eren, Mikasa, Armin, and they’re all staring at him, and he realizes that he’s blanked out again. He has no idea what they were talking about, when this meeting started or how long they’ve been waiting for him to come back.

“Levi,” Hanji says, and the way she says his name is not the way he needs to hear it. She only has one eye now.

Eren is regarding him with concern, Mikasa with distant curiosity. Armin is blond but the wrong kind of blond. Levi could just scream. 

There’s a teacup dangling from his fingers and suddenly the only thing he can do is turn away again and throw it at the wall, clenching his teeth as it shatters before getting up and walking away. 

He wants someone to come after him. He wants to be left alone. 

The absence by his side—the one he’s been trying to ignore—is so big it’s a presence in and of itself. He could swear someone is saying his name again, from a great distance, from down the hall, from a dream, from another lifetime: the one before a desolate roof in a dead town.

Before he knows it he’s outside, he’s past the stables and the training grounds, he’s in the woods. He’s forgotten his gear, his cloak, anything. If he started running now, and never stopped, it would be like none of this ever happened. He could be nobody.

-

It comes in waves.

From what he knows of waves, they break. They sweep things away. If you can’t swim, if you can’t breathe, you drown. 

But Levi doesn’t want to breathe. He wants Erwin. 

He wants his hands in Erwin’s hair, Erwin’s breath in his mouth, he wants the weight of that missing arm around his shoulders and the surety he felt when he walked on Erwin’s right side ever after. He wants Hanji’s smile, he wants another choice and another chance, he wants something to believe in now that they've achieved what they were fighting for and there’s nothing left to believe in except words they couldn’t say. 

Levi wants a scrap of cloth, a bolo tie, something more than this nothingness spilling into him and out of him. 

He is the wave and he is breaking, he is drowning, everything he’s ever loved is swept away every time with his own hands. Humanity’s strongest is humanity’s most selfish, making choices that affect everyone around him. 

He left Farlan and Isabel alone that day. 

He shut down on Hanji, the last most important person in his life. 

He loved Erwin Smith more than anything in the world, and Levi chose to let him die. 

Levi screams, sobs in huge gulps, in choking, wrenching bursts, days worth, months worth, years worth of tears until he can’t breathe, he absolutely can’t breathe anymore. 

And then somehow, in spite of himself, he keeps breathing anyway. 

-

_In the dream—if it is a dream, or is it a memory or a hope, a vision of a future or a record of something that happened somewhere else—he walks into the dark throne room, approaching the lattice-work screen that separates the common soldier from the king._

__

__

_Erwin sits regally, dressed in black save for the crown above his brows and the massive cloak that spreads out around him, draped on the dais to show its golden pattern of a giant tree. From the trunk in the middle there are three giant branches, or maybe there are nine. The limbs stretch into the folds and into the shadows behind him, into forever perhaps, but a few twist and end in Erwin. It’s hard to tell as he stands, descending the stairs as the pattern evolves behind him._

_“Levi.”_

_He doesn’t remember if he saw anyone else in this room. Only shadows, maybe, of people that were there once. But he doesn’t look around—to be honest, once he fixed his gaze on then-captain Erwin Smith, he never really looked anywhere else again. There was simply nothing else in the world he wanted to see more. It would be alright if the only thing he ever saw again was the man in front of him, cut off from him by another fragile, unbreakable wall._

_“I want you to know what I am asking you to do,” Erwin says in a patient voice that allows for no misunderstanding. “I am asking you to give up everything. I am asking you to change the world. I am asking you to find out why they stole our past and planned to deny us a future.”_

_The carvings on the screen, Levi sees, are also of a tree, or many trees—so many branches, almost a map—and within the trees are bodies twisted beyond human, paths that wind and spiral and curve back into themselves._

_“The way is long,” continues Erwin. “And it doubles back on itself a hundred times. I am asking you to offer up everything you have and everything you will be.”_

_The answer requires no thought: “I do. I will.” Pride is no objective. No cost is too great. This is everything he was meant to be. He wants to reach through the gaps and touch gold or darkness. As long as they shroud Erwin, either will do._

_“When you reach the end, we will be together. But you must do something first.”_

_Erwin pulls the screen aside. Levi drops to his knees out of respect, out of faith, out of need and desire and because he can do nothing else. A large hand reaches to raise his chin until they look eye to eye._

_“Finish it.”_

_He leans down, and Levi’s eyes fall closed._

_Or maybe he wakes up._

-

Once, Levi would have killed him. A hundred times he would have undone his death. A thousand times he would have died for him. Will die for him. It’s hard sometimes, to know what’s real anymore. The world has changed in impossible ways and all it took was a book in a drawer in a desk in a basement in a twice-ruined place and what would Erwin have said if he’d read it? Would this have been everything he'd hoped for? If Levi could change things, if he could do it all again, would he let it all happen this way or would he make sure that Erwin was there after all? Would he have defied his own final offer and Erwin’s final order just to ensure Erwin's life?

How many times would he make that choice?

How many times can you regret the thing you know you were meant to, _needed_ to do before you accept it?

And once you finally did, would you do it again?

-

Tomorrow they go beyond Wall Maria. Tomorrow, they’ll take the children (murderers, martyrs, self-absorbed, self-motivated, stronger than they ever should have needed to be, but still, children) and ride and when they stop it will be either because they’ve gone so far that they’ve come again to the same spot, or because they’ve run out of places to go.

There’s waves coming. Actual ones, made of water and salt and motion. Memories that aren’t his from a conversation overheard while eavesdropping. He’ll see them now, instead of just feeling them.

Hanji is sitting on the bed in the Commander’s room, and she has every right to do that. It’s her room now. Levi is the one in the wrong, coming in like he’s been invited when in fact he picked the lock and his hands shook so much it took him several tries. 

She doesn’t look upset, though. She looks relieved as she fits the pieces of a broken cup back together. It’s a stupid thing to do on top of where she intends to sleep, where pieces could fall and be lost among the sheets only to be found later by pain, but who is he to judge other people’s choices.

He takes off his boots and sits down on the bed facing away. 

“I know I told you that I think you made the wrong choice that day,” she says. 

“You also said it was my choice to make.” His voice sounds strange, the scraping of ceramic against its own raw insides; it’s rough on his ears. 

“It was. Just like it was my choice to be angry, and your choice to close yourself up in your grief.”

He nods.

“You've been acting like it was the greatest sorrow anyone has ever lived through,” Hanji sets down the broken pieces and pushes her glasses up in her hair. “Like the full weight of it was yours alone.”

He shrugs.

“You know, I knew Erwin longer than you. Losing him was unbearable for me. And I lost Moblit that day too. I lost two of my closest and oldest comrades, my closest and oldest friends... And then it felt like I lost the third.”

“I know,” he manages after a long silence as her words sink inside him. He wonders how she sees now, if the glasses help or hinder since now there’s only one way to look forward. “I’ve been selfish.”

“You and Erwin were both so goddamn selfish sometimes, you deserved each other,” she huffs a little, her bangs blowing away from her face in her sharp exhalation. “But he gave you the the choice. That’s what he wanted. And I think you did what he wanted, too. As much as I hate to admit it.” Hanji picks up two pieces of the cup. “I don’t know...I’ve never known...how to live without regrets. But I feel like maybe I know how to keep from adding to the pile I already have.”

Levi waits for her to continue; he’s shocked when she puts her forehead against his back, between his shoulder blades. She takes a deep breath and he can feel it in his own lungs. 

“Hanji…”

“I can’t bring Erwin back. I can’t bring Moblit back. It would be selfish to call them back just like it was selfish for them to go, to give their lives for the two of us because that’s what they did, ultimately. And we can be miserable and hate it and be apart from each other because we’re so stuck on what we lost, but you know, Levi? What’s the worst thing that anyone ever worries about happening?” Hanji presses against him harder. “It’s dying. It’s losing someone you feel like you can’t live without and then you have to go on living. The worst thing happened, Levi. And we’re still alive. So maybe...we should do something with that.”

They stay that way for several minutes. It’s the longest they’ve ever touched that wasn’t out of survival or necessity. She’s close enough that he thinks he can feel her pulse, its cadence almost familiar, but with a hitch and a gasp and a sigh. Or is that him? 

“Breathe, Levi,” she says, or is that _him_?

He moves away, Hanji shifting back into herself, pulling her glasses back down. He puts his boots back on. He leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind him. 

-

_Erwin pulls the screen aside. Levi drops to his knees out of respect, out of faith, out of need and desire and because he can do nothing else. A large hand reaches down and raises his chin until they look eye to eye._

_“Finish it.”_

_“I can't,” Levi hisses out suddenly, desperately, all the air he doesn’t have anymore escaping. “I don't know how if you're not here to show me.”_

_Erwin smiles kindly—his real smile, genuine and patient; achingly sad, endlessly beautiful. He strokes Levi's cheek with his thumb. Levi wills himself not to shut his eyes._

_"You do. You will. There's no other choice. I promise you that at the end we will be together, but not before then. Not here. Not now. This is all I have left to give you, Levi. What else do you want more?" He leans down._

_What else?_

_Everything._

_A day outside this piece of time, real and so Levi could see and feel Erwin for himself without question. An hour, even. One more minute. One second._

_Levi loved Erwin more than anything in the world._

_One breath._

_Levi’s eyes fall closed._

-

They ride through Shiganshina. Armin attempts to correct them when Hanji and Levi break away to detour past a nothing house on a nowhere road, but his directions go unheard...or if are heard, ignored. Levi looks up at the windows as they pass; the flowers will be long dead by now. Maybe on the return trip he’ll bring something else.

Maybe on the return trip, he’ll take something back

When the grass turns to sand and the horizon starts to become a line, they let the younger ones go ahead. This is their victory, although it feels a bit hollow. He hopes they can’t tell, although even Eren himself stands in the ocean sullenly, as if this wasn’t everything he ever wanted. 

Levi watches the waves for the first time and they roll up softly, a whisper like leaves on a golden tree. Connie, Jean and Sasha are soaked in minutes, their voices and laughter echoing off the water that seems so vast, so deep, like it goes on forever… But it doesn’t. Does anything?

Hanji picks something up and he immediately warns her—"Watch out, Hanji. Don't touch it, it might be poisonous”—to utterly no avail; he didn’t expect anything more or less. Instead she looks over her shoulder and winks at him. 

Is it still a wink when you only have one eye? Is it still the rest of your life when half of it is gone? Does the feeling stay like this, does it fade away, does it go in an out, past tense, current tense, future? If you go out into the ocean far enough, do you come back around? If you knew every path ends up in the same place; if the road doubles back time and time again but slightly different like every dream, would you make the same choice? This time. Next time. 

It’s the hardest thing in the world to let go of, and Levi’s not sure he wants to. He doesn’t want Erwin to be someone that was, but Levi's own hands that assured he’s no longer someone that is. This scar goes deeper than any other, and the pain and the pride of bearing it are as addictive as the way Erwin’s eyes widened when he saw something that fascinated him. Levi wanted to fascinate him every day. He still does. That intention and its accompanying sorrow will be lurking behind every action from now on, forever—whether or not it he lets it influence his decisions will be up to him.

-

_In the dream, the throne room is no longer dark. The screen is gone. The giant black and gold robe lays on the floor and he gathers it up in his arms. There’s a door to the outside where the dais was. He could go through that door. Or he could stay here._

_The robe is heavy. It smells like Erwin. It reminds him. It hurts. It will never stop hurting. The weight is dragging him down. He shifts it to get a better hold, trying to figure out how or if he could carry it with him through the door. Some days it will ache like the way his leg never really healed right. Some days he will be angry and some days he’ll remember what it was like to wake up next to Erwin. Some days he will stop expecting Hanji to look at him with both eyes, and some days he’ll watch the way she starts to say something to the man just behind her shoulder before she remembers. Some days they will fight with each other, but the worst thing that could ever happen happened. So now they know. And now there’s nothing to be afraid of._

_Except being alive._

-

In the dream, he wakes up. He flinches a little at sunbeam falling across his face, and when he blinks the flashes of color away he sees Erwin. He’s got his head propped up on his right hand, and he smiles.

Levi scowls.

“Were you watching me sleep?

“And if I was?” His voice is light, 

“Creepy old man.” Levi shifts in the covers, pretending to be annoyed.

“I know.” Erwin laughs, and his smile broadens. A large hand reaches to raise his head until they look eye to eye. He leans forward to kiss Levi, and in that moment, in every moment—in memory, in illusion, at the end of every path—as much as it hurts, one thing will always be there.

Levi loves Erwin more than anything in the world.

-

It comes in waves.

Levi removes his boots and sets them carefully aside. He rolls up his pant legs to just under his knees and takes a shallow step into the water. It’s so cold his heart stops for an instant.

It comes in waves.

And now the waves themselves come, lapping around his ankles.

Levi breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about this fic basically every day for nearly a year. At work, falling asleep, driving...it wouldn't leave. Posting it is a terror and a relief. Thank you for reading. 
> 
> Credit goes to my wife for actually coining the phrase "golden god with a heart of darkness," which will always be my favorite way to describe Erwin.
> 
> Sometimes I've been sure I was done, and SNK would come to be like any other series to me—a favorite, but no longer a passion. Sometimes I feel like I fall in love with these characters and this story all over again once a week. Sometimes it's the worst, and sometimes it's the best.
> 
> The last time I posted something I alluded to things in my life (in my head) that had been very difficult for me. That hasn't changed. What I hope is changing it the way I look at it. 
> 
> This is for so many people, too many to name, but there are a few that stand out. 
> 
> For Laurel and Lu and rhetoric_femme and flecksofpoppy: I have never been able to tell you what your support means to me.
> 
> For Jo: I had to. It was Eruri. I couldn't not write it, no matter how hard I tried (and I tried really hard).
> 
> For L: because everything, for everything, in furious happiness and incomprehensible grief. Because we're going to wake up early. 
> 
> 二千年後のきみへ、私へ
> 
>  _"...you strode deeper and deeper_  
>  _into the world,_  
>  _determined to do,_  
>  _the only thing you could do—_  
>  _determined to save_  
>  _the only life you could save."_ \- Mary Oliver, "The Journey"


End file.
